THE REACH OF WAR; Iraq Insurgent Group Claims It Killed Missing U.S. Soldiers

Published: June 5, 2007

A Sunni insurgent group released a videotape on Monday that showed the military identification cards of two missing American soldiers who were captured last month south of Baghdad, and a narrator said they had been killed.

The videotape -- from the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella insurgent group that includes Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia -- did not provide proof of whether the two soldiers were alive or dead. But an American military official with the missing soldiers' unit said the identification cards appeared to be authentic, suggesting that the group was involved in the attack.

''We decided to finish this issue and announce the killing of the soldiers and to make the enemies of God carry the bitter responsibility,'' the narrator said. ''After the three soldiers were alive as prisoners they became dead bodies.''

American military officials said they would study the images for clues and continue searching for the missing soldiers, Specialist Alex R. Jimenez, 25, of Lawrence, Mass., and Pvt. Byron W. Fouty, 19, of Waterford, Mich.

''We've been on the lookout for something like this,'' said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, an American military spokesman in Baghdad. Investigators, he said, ''will continue to review it for whatever information we can gain from it.''

Images of kidnapped Westerners and attacks against American troops have frequently been used for propaganda purposes by insurgents. The videotape released Monday was significant largely because it was less graphic than usual and contained little evidence that those who produced it actually held the two soldiers captive or had killed them.

Its limited scope and its appearance nearly a month after the May 12 attack seemed to confirm what some American military commanders have suspected all along: that the insurgents are seeking to drag out the process of discovery, to deny closure to the families of the missing soldiers and the thousands of American and Iraqi troops who have been searching for them since the day they disappeared.

The undated videotape was made available to reporters by the SITE Institute, which tracks jihadist Web sites. Of the nearly 11 minutes of videotape, the only portion that would seem to correspond to the attack shows what appears to be a burning Humvee, videotaped from far away at night for a few seconds.

Military officials said two Humvees were burned in the attack, which occurred before dawn near Yusifiya, a Sunni stronghold about 15 miles south of the capital. But the videotape does not show the three captured soldiers or the five soldiers killed during the ambush, one of whom was an Iraqi.

The body of the third captured soldier, Pfc. Joseph J. Anzack Jr., was found in the Euphrates River on May 23.

What the videotape displays is a group of masked men apparently planning the ambush using a diagram pinned to a tree. Personal items that appear to belong to the soldiers are also shown, including a pistol, credit cards and American and Iraqi money.

At the end, the videotape shows a still image of both sides of the photo identifications of Specialist Jimenez and Private Fouty.

Above the photos, written in Arabic, was the message, ''Bush is the reason for the loss of your sons.''

The videotape repeatedly mocks the American military for being unable to find the three soldiers. Despite the deployment of 4,000 American troops, it said, ''they failed.''

''No one will be held responsible for what happened to the three soldiers,'' the narrator said, ''except the American Army and its leaders and politicians, who degrade all of mankind and do not care for the feelings of the three soldiers' mothers.''

The release of the videotape coincided with the announcement of a complex attack on Sunday on a unit from the same division as the captured soldiers. The assault wounded eight Americans at a small patrol base southeast of Baghdad, the American military said in a statement. It involved a car bomb, small arms fire and mortar fire, the statement said.

That attack -- like the one on May 12 -- highlighted the risks that have come with sending soldiers to smaller bases as part of the new counterinsurgency plan for securing Iraq. May was the third worst month for American deaths since the start of the war in March 2003, and commanders have acknowledged that attacks from insurgents have grown more sophisticated.

On Monday, new details emerged about the high-profile kidnapping last week of five Britons from a government building in Baghdad.

The American commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, said Monday that gunmen responsible for the attack were most likely part of the same militant Shiite cell whose leader was killed last month by an American Special Operations unit after he was implicated in the deaths of five American soldiers in Karbala in January.

The suspected Shiite cell leader, Sheikh Azhar al-Duleimi, was killed during a firefight in Baghdad on May 17, officers said.

In a brief interview, General Petraeus suggested that retaliation for the killing of Mr. Duleimi may have been the motivation for the abduction of the Britons, who were seized from a Ministry of Finance compound in Baghdad on May 29 by gunmen dressed as police commandos.

''There is a pretty good chance they are from the cell whose leader, Azhar al-Duleimi, we killed a few weeks back,'' General Petraeus said. ''He was the individual who led the raid who killed our soldiers in Karbala.''

He said he believed that the cell was one of the many splinter groups that have broken away from the Mahdi Army militia of the anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Mortar shells hit the Green Zone and several other neighborhoods of the capital on Monday, killing at least one person, an Interior Ministry official said. Three roadside bombs in Baghdad killed at least three people and wounded more than a dozen.